Part 8

A white crane beside the landing-place awoke, flapped his wings, and flew slowly off. Stately men and beautiful women thronged the quay and looked down curiously as the boat grated against the beach. “We have brought another from the wars,” the steersman called to them. “Welcome, friend,” those on the quay called gently; and “Thanks, friends,” Douka answered.

His tortured muscles knotted and failed as he tried to climb from the boat, and he fell back helplessly. Two of the oarsmen bent to him, lifted him like a child, and bore him between them up the long flights of steps. He had fainted.

When he awoke, his nude body lay on a warm marble slab, and two male attendants of the bath were kneading his aching flesh with perfumed hands. Their touch was like ice and like fire, and life seemed poured back into his body as into a wineskin as they worked. The hands stole over him, gradually more and more softly, exploring, soothing, stupefying. He slept.... He awoke once more, to find that they had placed him in what seemed to be a bed of live coals, in a white furnace which burned and leaped with light, but the crackling heat did not harm him, and again he slept.... He awoke in a high-roofed hall, and all around him was light and laughter, jets of fountains and music of slow streams; and the two attendants plunged him again and again into pools which received him as into a bed and covered him with warm floods.

Then he was rubbed with oils, and a garland was placed on his head. Two girls came, bringing him clothing--a blue-bordered peplos, a white mantle for his shoulders, and white sandals for his feet. “Drink,” they said, and they gave him a cup of barley crushed in water flavoured with mint.

“Now it is time for the feast,” they cried gayly. “Come to the feast.” And they led him through alleys bordered with white violets, hyacinths, roses, crocuses, and ghostly narcissi. In the cleft hills the olive groves gleamed like pools of moonlight; a waking dove gurgled drowsily, and the cicadas sang; and to left and right he heard faint snatches of old Greek hymns and saw white figures moving slowly along the sandy paths.

So they brought him to the banquet in a high-roofed hall of marble, lit by flambeaux in sconces along the walls, garlanded with white lilies, and spread with Oriental tables and low couches. And boys and girls flew laughingly about serving the meats and drink.

He was led to his place, and reclined in the antique fashion on a cushion beneath his elbow. Then guests began to appear through the wide marble doors. To his delight and astonishment he knew them. They were like old friends--friends of his youth, friends of the youth of all the world; and they came into the hall with garlands in their hair and bright robes upon them and gayety and peace in their looks.

There came Achilles, his gigantic arm over the shoulders of Hector, and a smile on his youthful face as he talked; and goat-bearded, bandy-legged Thersites, limping and chattering endlessly; and stately Nestor; broad-breasted, stout Agamemnon; Priam, leaning on an ivory staff; wily Odysseus, walking alone in the throng; huge, ungainly Ajax; gossipy Menelaus, Sarpedon, and Patroclus; Neoptolemus leading by the hand the sweet boy Astyanax; Diomedes, Æneas, smooth-shaven Troilus, black Memnon, laughing Paris. And the women! white-armed Briseïs, motherly Hecuba, Andromache and gentle Cressida, Chryseïs, grave Cassandra, Penelope, Polyxena, Iphigenia, the lithe, dark-eyed beauty of Myrine the Amazon, and the golden radiance of Helen, her face like noon sunlight--Helen of Sparta, for whose sake the Greeks are forever named Hellenes, at whose shrine all men worship, and shall worship so long as beauty endures--these came into the high-roofed hall; these, and many more.

And after them came an old blind singer, a lyre in his hands, a laurel crown on his head. “Homer, Homer!” they cried. “A welcome to Homer!” All rose as he passed, and they led him to the highest place in the hall, and took their pillows again, applauding him.

They poured libations and began the banquet, drinking from four-handled cups studded with gold. They ate no flesh. There was no mark of death in the hall, or violence, or cruelty. They talked gayly, and all their talk was of peace; they told old stories, but all their stories were of peace; and when they sang, their songs were of peace. And always the boys and girls served them, laughing.

Douka drank from his cup, and it was filled again and again. Pain and hatred fell from him like a garment; he laughed and jested with the rest--with Paris of Troy, Paris of Asia, Paris of the East, smiling on his right, and bearded Odysseus on his left. “Tell us a tale, Odysseus,” he begged at last, “a tale of your travels and your prowess.” And Odysseus, shaking great tones from his chest like snowflakes in winter, told of Nausicaa, daughter of King Alcinoüs, and the game of ball on the Phocæan shore.

“Prowess?” he ended. “There is no prowess but kindliness. Only kindliness lives forever in the memory.”

Then Helen, smiling at them, cried: “Sing, Homer, sing, for the moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is midnight, and the time is going by. Sing of hearth and shrine, sing of youth and age, sing of love, sing of peace, sing of the flocks safe from harm, the plowed earth and the groves, and the untroubled sea. Sing of the child nestling close to his mother, and of joy, joy, joy! Sing to us of these, old Homer.”

And Homer sang.

* * * * *

At three o’clock in the morning a Turkish torpedo-boat patrolling in the Black Sea came upon the aviator who had destroyed the _Sultan Omar_. He lay in the wreckage of his hydro-aeroplane. The Turks took him unresistingly into their craft. They say that he sang softly to himself in an obscure Grecian dialect and babbled incessantly of Helen and the heroes who fell before Troy.

THE END

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

Transcriber’s Notes:

Page 46: la Toisond ’Or changed to la Toison d’Or.

Page 49: Hotel de Ville changed to Hôtel de Ville.

Inconsistent hyphenation retained as printed. A few printing punctuation errors were corrected.

End of Project Gutenberg's Tales from a Famished Land, by Edward Eyre Hunt